Maji ni uhai - Water is life

WATER. A MAJOR ISSUE. DEFINITELY IN AFRICA. LIFE HERE LITERALLY TOURNS AROUND IT, AND WHEN IT'S AVAILABLE, IT'S A SOURCE OF UNRESERVED JOY, AND LIFE BECOMES MUCH EASIER.

For the second year in a row, local people have been struggling with a severe drought—worse than usual. The second small rainy season is currently underway—or rather, not really underway—and it has a huge impact on the course of the entire year. The water it brings will literally save and sustain everything until the first March downpours arrive. Instead of the expected rains, however, the sun is scorching hot. Farmers have nothing to irrigate their fields with. Springs, rivers, and places where people normally go to fetch water have completely dried up, and livestock are dying in many areas. And those who have access to water are selling it to others. It's not easy at all. Everyone waits every day for a few drops from the sky, but instead, the sun is getting hotter and hotter. We'd love to help the families around us secure access to water, but for now, it's a superhuman task for us. Sometimes it might even be possible, but the authorities somehow make it complicated.

Mariamu

And her children suffer not only from a lack of food, but also from a lack of water. She has to pay for every bucket or canister, and Amrani has to carry them all on her head. The children can't afford to drink their fill whenever they get thirsty, and doing laundry, taking a bath, or flushing the toilet we built for them isn't a given either. We've started the process with the local authorities, and we'd very much like to have water brought as close to their home as possible, but the bureaucracy isn't making it easy for us at all. We'll see how far we get when I return to Tanzania.

Baraka—Blessing

That's the name of the village—or rather, a small community. But many people live here—families and children. And it's quite a long way to the water source. Carrying water home takes up a large part of the women's day, and of course, they have to use it very sparingly. And digging a well is not cheap at all. It depends on the location, and the cost is often calculated based on what we'd pay for a well back home—and is frequently much higher. So we tried to find out how much it would cost to bring water as close to the settlement as possible. The authorities were pleasantly surprised that we wanted to help the local community and offered to cover half the costs. However, the amount they presented to us came to 100,000 CZK. So, whether we liked it or not, we had to put this plan and this wish on hold.

Longoi Primary School

Although the government in Tanzania builds schools, it then more or less leaves them to their own fate. Teachers here don't have it easy at all. The school has been built with new toilets, but what good are they if there's nothing to flush them with? The students and teachers planted trees and flowers on the school grounds, but they withered. There's nothing to water them with. For most of the year, the children don't have access to water at school—neither for drinking nor for washing their hands. The school has water tanks, and occasionally the school pays a high price to have them filled, but the supply runs out in three days. As a result, the children have to walk during class to a spot about a kilometer or two away, where they can fill buckets and canisters with water. The teachers had a budget estimate prepared for drilling a well. The cost: 28 million schillings—roughly 260,000 CZK. Even the fulfillment of this wish we must leave to stars.

ZACYDO

At least here, we've managed to take a positive step for the children at several primary schools in Zanzibar. As you already know, we've been collaborating with this local organization for a long time. We were interested in the plan they'd set for themselves: to supply selected schools with 25 twenty-liter buckets equipped with stands, faucets, and soap, so that students would be able to wash their hands while at school. Because, yes, many African schools lack both running water and faucets aswell. The distribution of this "equipment" was part of a project in which Zacydo focused, among other things, on improving access to basic sanitation, improving children's hygiene habits to promote better health, and preventing the onset and spread of diseases caused by poor hygiene, such as cholera and various parasitic and bacterial intestinal diseases. We were able to secure 15 buckets with stands and faucets for students at several local schools.

This may seem like a small gesture, but in reality, it has an impact on improving the hygiene conditions for nearly a thousand students—and that's no small feat.

We intend to keep it up :).

Water, as we all know, is one of the essential conditions for life. Yet for millions of people and children around the world, access to it is by no means a given. We refuse to give up, and we want to start with at least small steps that will help individuals, families, schools, and communities gain easier access to water and improve children's hygiene conditions. If you'd like to support this initiative directly, simply include the keyword "WATER" in the note when sending your donation. And we promise that, sooner or later, we'll use your donation to support a project focused on improving access to water.